Well,Golly, Really, Someone Ought To Do Something

De facto, Libya has fissioned.  There is no longer one Libya other than within the lines on a map.  In the real world there is now an East Libya centered on Benghazi and Tobruk (or Tobruq, if you insist on current spelling) and a West Libya comprised of Tripoli and the oilfields to its south.  It merits mention that East Libya also has its own oilfields and loading facilities.

The residual government of Brother Leader and associates has no sway over any of East Libya which is now an independent if not yet sovereign entity.  The tribes of East Libya have withdrawn all allegiance to the Gaddafi regime while the armed forces have defected in wholesale lots to the insurrectionists.  The latter occurred because the attraction of region, of tribe, of clan outweighs all the artifices of Gaddafi's view of socialism, Libyan style.

In West Libya, the man who identified himself as "history," as "revolution," and other abstracts, is having more than a few problems killing enough and terrorizing enough to keep even the semblance of power in the capital and its environs.  The mercenary and militia forces currently loyal to the one time strongman have demonstrated a capacity and taste for killing people.  This has not yet translated into security for Brother Leader.

The greatest advantage Gaddafi has in West Libya is the absence of a coherent resistance.  The uprising in Tripoli unlike that in East Libya has been inchoate from the beginning.  While the leaderless uprising has some advantages--it is uniquely invulnerable to decapitation strikes by the status quo--it lacks the organizational and structural integrity which can  assure the survival of a resistance movement even under heavy and deadly pressure.

A critical question therefore is why the difference between East Libya, the home of an organized, long standing anti-government movement, and West Libya, the site of a genuine leaderless movement?  In a major way the difference between what happened in Benghazi or Tobruk on the one hand and Tripoli on the other is a reflection, even a consequence of Libyan history.

Prior to the forced unification of Libya by Italy in 1931 at the end of a twenty year campaign, Libya had been three quasi-states: Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica.  Cyrenaica is East Libya.  Tripolitania is West Libya--absent its oilfields.  These are found to the south in old Fezzan.  The three divisions are ancient, dating back to the days of Rome and Carthage.  The divisions are not simply geographic.  Nor are they simply lines on old maps.

The divisions run more across the human terrain than the merely physical.  They coincide with tribal and clan homelands, homelands which have existed since the mythic dawn of time.  As the Italians discovered when they embarked on their great adventure in imitating Rome, the differences between the three regions were starkest when expressed in the degree of opposition to the new colonials.  While none of the three were easy nuts to crack, Cyrenaica was the hardest by far.

The New Rome of Mussolini determined to erase the existence of the historical consciousness of the tribesmen of the newly conquered provinces and for that reason decreed the new "state" of Libya into existence.  Decreeing is easy, doing much harder.  The Italians were never able to create a unified Libyan state, and their efforts not only were unsuccessful, they became counterproductive.

The Anglo-American forces which occupied Libya from 1943 to the end of the war contented themselves with administering the territory for the convenience of the war effort.  This approach, which paid utterly no attention to the nature of the human terrain, continued into the post-war period with the creation of a monarchy far more artificial than organic.  The not made in Libya monarchy lasted until it fell to Gaddafi's 1969 coup having been kept alive until then by the Cold War needs of the US and its NATO partners as well as the development of the domestic oilfields.  The important fact to keep in mind is that at no time during the quarter century of its existence did the monarchy, the foreign supporters of the monarchy, or anyone else attempt to create a unified national identity for Libya.

At the time King Idris left to nobody's real sorrow, the old divisions continued to exist with some small changes.  Due to the development of the oilfields of West Libya there had been a degree of integration between Fezzan and Tripolitania.  There had been no such process with regard to Cyrenaica, the population centers of which were separated from Tripoli by some five or six hundred kilometers of sand crossed by a single all weather road and a number of ancient caravan tracks.

The proving of oilfields in Cyrenaica during the early Gaddafi years served to reinforce the separate identities of East and West Libya, or, to use the old terms, Cyrenaica and Tripolitania/Fezzan.  Then as a matter of policy driven by a deep fear of military coup, Colonel Gaddafi reinforced the ancient divisions by not only refusing to integrate tribes and regions in national institutions including the army, but by deepening and widening the divisions.

His version of divide and conquer may have been successful in precluding a military coup but did so at the price of assuring profound disaffiliation in Cyrenaica.  For at least the last quarter century there has been a palpable and growing sense of "Cyrenaica for the Cyrenaicians."  When Gaddafi ordered the prison massacre in Benghazi in 1996 he gave this growing movement a shot of growth hormone.

Since 1996 the anti-government sentiment in Cyrenaica has developed silently but profoundly with results which were stunningly obvious in the first seventy-two hours of the insurrection.  Bluntly put, the Gaddafi regime lost Benghazi and Tobruk and the other towns of East Libya almost instantly.  Local army units changed sides in a heartbeat and took their weapons with them.  Air force and navy units did something similar, at least defecting to foreign shores rather than shoot on fellow tribe and clan members.  Cyrenaica for the Cyrenaicians!

The fact that Gaddafi moved in foreign mercenaries from Chad and sub-Saharan Africa shows he well understood that the loyalties of tribe and clan would trump any appeal held by his "revolution."  He knew and knows that his heavy heel has an Achilles tendon.  The foreigners were the splint for this potentially fatal weakness.

Whether the Rent-A-Killer forces will prove sufficient along with those Libyans who have a vested or visceral interest in the status quo to keep Brother Leader in power in West Libya remains to be seen.  One can be more certain about Gaddafi;s political will.  If nothing else he both believes his own propaganda and understands that he has no retirement haven waiting for him.  He has to stay and fight it out, to die in place if that is the way it plays out.  The same applies to his two most visible sons.

The dissidents of Cyrenaica have the political will as well.  They well understand the price of failure and the Egyptian border may prove to be a line in the sand too far should the Colonel and his killers gain the upper hand.  The so far successful insurrectionists of East Libya (Cyrenaica) also have both the organizational and material means to wage prolonged defensive war.  In addition, the majority of the population is with them.

This implies the war within the borders of Libya could continue for a long and bloody time absent sufficient outside pressure to end it.  East and West Libya could exchange inconclusive blows for weeks, months, even years if the oil continues to flow in sufficient amounts and can be exchanged for the necessities of life and war. It would not be pretty.

It is this far from unlikely eventuality which makes the insipid reactions of the Obama administration and other governments so disheartening.  The Security Council limiting itself to a "press statement" would be risible were it not both tragic and, given the long standing policies of China and Russia, predictable.  Far more disturbing was the absence of UN Ambassador Susan Rice from the Security Council vote.

Ms Rice who has worked herself into an excellent imitation of war fever over the plight of people in Darfur was off to South Africa for a confab on "global sustainability" and thus too preoccupied to consider the situation in Libya.  Her boss, President Obama, is also absent.  Sure, his press flack assures us the Clueless Guy in the Oval will have something to say apropos Libya today or tomorrow, but that is scarcely the sort of laid back approach the situation demands.

Gaddafi has to be forced out quickly.  He has to be made to go--alive or dead--before the cycles of killing reach the point that Bosnia will look like a Baptist Sunday Social in comparison.  The US and other civilized states such as the UK and Italy can freeze bank accounts, impose travel bans, put sanctions in place, prohibit arms sales, order their national corporate citizens to halt all activity, even use NATO assets to impose naval and air blockades.  None of these require a great deal of head scratching, consultations, joint communiques, but all demand action.

Somebody really, really has to do something.  All the somethings are well understood.  All are easy to do.  None require the UN do anything.  All demand the civilized states including the US put pens on paper, sign the required orders, and apply the pressure.

Even symbolic actions, the freezing of funds for example, would undercut the willingness of the mercenaries to stay in Libya and embolden even the leaderless movement in West Libya to keep on keeping on.  If, at the same time, the civilized states would make the right sort of noises exempting low ranking trigger pullers from prosecution, the pro-Gaddifi forces would be weakened even more.  There are other easy to take and quick to operate measures as well, but this roster gives some indications of the great number of tools available to assist in the ending of the Gaddafi madness.

But, someone has to go first.  That is what the US formerly did.  What is wrong now, Mr Obama?